


Exit Bode

by Kaesa



Series: Unspeakable Madness [6]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Espionage, Gen, Mad Science, Minor Character Death, POV Minor Character, POV Third Person, Science Fiction, Stream of Consciousness, Surreal, Time Loop, Time Travel, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:54:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaesa/pseuds/Kaesa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working overtime in the Department of Mysteries can be more than a little stressful.  Broderick Bode tries to take a philosophical outlook.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exit Bode

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by the MWPP RPG Leviosa, which can be found at LJ as leviosarpg. This particular take on Augustus Rookwood belongs to thinkatory.

He is an Unspeakable -- a spy, a researcher, an investigator, a man of the cloak and dagger, or cloak and wand, and is it an Invisibility cloak or a regular one? A regular one, he has learned. A regular cloak, and a regular job, with regular hours. Nine to five. Or five to nine? He's forgotten already. Nine to five to nine again and how many fives will he pass before the five that releases him from work?

It's after his ninth five that he realizes something's wrong -- dreadfully, horribly, awfully wrong. What is it this time? Time, time, what is the time? Is it five or nine or something in between? What is Time, anyway?

He runs, as if in a slow motion Muggle movie, to the room of time. Why does he run? He has all the time in the world, and he might as well keep it. Time is money, and a Galleon saved is an hour earned. He can live forever, forever and a day, as long as he's here from nine to five to nine....

"Hello?" he cries into the room, and there is an answer, albeit gabbled and confused as his thoughts at the moment.

"Hello, hello, hello, Bode! What're you doing here?" asks Rookwood, who is in Azkaban for life. "Go back to your desk, it's five to nine to five for you! Get me some coffee, while you're at it. What time is it? My watch is broken, what's the -- gods, it's late! Or is it early? It was the very best butter--"

"It's _Time!_" he shouts impatiently.

"Time? Time, time, time, I ask you, what's the time, and you tell me it's time! Now, what good is that?"

"No, it's _Time,_ we have too much Time on our hands, it's leaking!" he says.

"Leaking! Leaking? Time can't leak, it's oozing!"

"It's running too fast, or too slow, or--"

"Or not at all! Don't stand around talking like idiots, you're wasting Time!" A third voice joins in, but whether it is Rhadamanthys Coyne, who jumped beyond his own veil, or Broderick himself who is speaking again and again, he cannot tell.

"Too fast, then," Rookwood says. "It's too fast, it's always too fast, never enough time in the day--" 

"Too much time on our hands!" Broderick protests. "Too much, too much, you've let it loose! The time's out of the bag now, no use shutting the door on it!"

"That's love," says the third voice, and it _is_ mad old Coyne. "Love makes the time pass, and time makes love pass, and you're out of time!"

"You're mad," realizes Broderick. "You're dead, too. And Rookwood's in prison."

"We're all mad _here!_" says Coyne. "You're out of time!"

"It was the very best butter," mourns Rookwood.

"Never mind the butter, we're wasting Time!" Broderick runs forward, presses the red button and waits for it to suck up the free Time.

There is a hideous sucking, a horrendous tearing feeling, and suddenly Broderick is alone in the darkened Time lab. One of the grandfather clocks strikes midnight. He checks his Department-issue watch, which is flashing, in black rectangular letters, the message of _Go home!_ 

"See you later," he hears Coyne say cheerfully, a thin, sharp smile in his voice. Broderick turns his head and sees no one. He could swear he just heard Coyne, no matter that he's been dead for a long time. But what, he wonders, _is_ Time?

He stands, dusting himself off. Was he on the floor because he was asleep, or did he fall when he pressed the red button? But no, the button is right there, perfectly unpressed. He must have dreamt the scenario, and besides, Coyne and Rookwood are long gone, both to various madnesses.

Still, it bothers him. He wasn't working with Time, but with Fate; his job was in among the prophecies, not the hourglasses.

_See you later,_ Coyne's last words to him. How much later? How much time does he have -- or is it Time he has?

_Go home!_ flashes his watch again, and he decides to listen to it. But on his way out, he stops in another room.

"See you later," he says, staring at the veil. It's true, whether he wants to believe it or not. He has made his peace; accepted his fate -- no matter how much time is between now and then, he will die, as everyone does.

Then he leaves the veil room, turns away from the fluttering curtain where the voices whisper, and goes back to his daily life, his boring life of cloak and wand. Everyone in the wizarding world is possessed of a cloak and a wand; there is nothing different about him. He just knows a little more, that's all. He will meet the same end as all others.

Exit Bode.


End file.
